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A couple of days ago I found out about a magical universe that exists within a hilly part of Oregon right off of the I-5 highway called the Enchanted Forest.

Heres what I know about the Enchanted Forest:

you have to take a road called Enchanted Way to get there

the parking lot is large and houses a Transformer

Thats all I know about it because it was closed for the off season.Even more closed (despite what their tripod website advertises) is an amusement park called Thrillville located directly beside the Forest.

Guarded by nothing except for a broken fence and a very grumpy old man in a navy blue VW Bug, Alex and I went in to Thrill Ville and got to do the following things with out any lines!

While I was telling Alex about my admiration for water, he blew my mind by telling me about these parks that are filled with them!

So the other week, we decided to fly from our respective homes, meeting in Las Vegas and going on a road trip in search of a water park.

We were told about a place about 2 hours west of Vegas called Lake Dolores. The drive was easy enough, it just took a little back peddling off of the highway to get to and it was SO worth it to go on an off season, like we did.

We found a great parking spot

and walked up to see that they had changed the name of the place.

There was a huge lack of staffing, which we assumed was probably due to the bad economy. Undeterred by this fact, and the unusual appearance, we entered.

The best part of going to a water park on an off season is that there are no lines!

It was so much fun in the park that I almost didn’t realize that there was almost no water…

While we were there, Alex and I played some video games and even made a new friend who lived in a near by bog!

at first, our new friend seems a little…timid

but after he warmed up to us a bit, I guess you could say he had a pretty good sense of humor.

I had a great trip to Lake Dolores and didn’t want to leave but Alex and I are planning a trip back to have water park picnic real soon.

I recently took a trip to Ellicott City, MD to visit Ghost Town Tattoo and a friend that some call Machine Gun Vince. A man who welds guns from scratch, smokes more than he breathes, will skin a dear an sample the meat BEFORE sticking it into the oven, and sells furniture that he’s found in houses where people were murdered and has it sold as “vintage furniture” in boutique shops for 1000′s of dollars.

I was interested in shooting new guns, trying new….cuisine, and live in someone else’s Italian leather shoes for a few days. After the food poisoning from eating a seared steak left my system, i had quite an interesting time seeing how people in such a small town find day to day happiness. I was on a photo hunt to find beauty in something that may seem dreary to city folk, like myself.

I ended up shooting a slew of guns, exploring very metal basements, seeing where the props from The Wire ended up, hunting abandoned homes, and finding abandoned grave yards along the way.